Dear RSF:
Please join us next Wednesday, December 3rd for a presentation by Visiting Scholar Arianne Eason entitled “Segregation Today, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever”: A Mutually Reinforcing Psychological Cycle Stagnating Change”.
Eason is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has been since 2019. She holds a PhD from the University of Washington in Seattle, and a BA in Psychology from Yale University.
Her research examines how features of our social and cultural context shape peoples’ attitudes and behavior in ways that work to reify existing inequalities and stagnate change. Overall, her work aims to shed light on: 1) how we think about and behave towards diverse others within a complex society riddled with inequality; and 2) how we facilitate positive change. Towards these aims, her research draws broadly on developmental, social, and cultural psychology. Among other honors, Eason was the SAGE early career trajectory award winner in 2022.
At RSF, Eason is interrogating the psychological causes for why children and adults maintain and perpetuate racial segregation, using survey and experimental methods. She hypothesizes that there is a mutually reinforcing cycle of segregation whereby structural segregation instills the perception that people prefer same-race peers. In turn, these perceptions are used to justify continued racial segregation.